EYE Weekly Doesn't See Eye To Eye With TTC Employees

Striking our fuse

April 30, 2008 12:04

We try to be sympathetic to TTC workers, we really do. Even if they do collectively (alongside management) provide consistently mediocre customer service, there are worse sets of employees you could have to deal with every day. (Bell Canada, we’re looking at you.)

And as EYE WEEKLY writer Chris Bilton recently documented (in “Sympathy for the driver,” City, Feb. 28), it can be a job that would try anyone’s patience — monotony punctuated by crowded periods of extreme crankiness.

So we’ve sometimes stood up to those who call TTC employees whiny, under-skilled, overpaid jerks who have no idea how good they have it.

But last weekend’s sudden strike pretty much completely drained our reservoir of goodwill. After promising to give the public 48 hours notice of any strike action and then having virtually every one of their public demands met in a settlement agreement signed by their leadership that would have guaranteed that TTC drivers would be the highest-paid transit workers in the GTA, the union membership decided to strike anyway. And they did so not on two days’ notice, but on one hour’s, at midnight on a Friday, stranding thousands who were downtown enjoying the spring weather or working the late shift in nightclubs and bars.

In the strike vote and in the manner in which the action was taken, TTC employees showed Toronto transit riders exactly how important they think we are. The contempt that has always been simmering under every grunted refusal to offer directions or to explain a delay became overt: the people of Toronto can go fuck themselves, as far as TTC union members are concerned. They showed us that in their view, $8-an-hour dishwashers getting off after a busy shift can —?surprise! — walk the three-hour trip to Etobicoke; disabled senior citizens can — surprise! — go without groceries for a few days; the whole city can — surprise! — grind to a halt if need be because, hey, TTC employees think asshole-in-chief Bob Kinnear didn’t lobby hard enough for an additional 25 cents an hour on top of the generous raises already negotiated and the contract did not contain language offering job protections that were never on the bargaining table in the first place.

Everyone who follows the transit situation knows the real villains in the big story are the provincial and federal governments who do not properly fund the system, leading to service strangulation, poor maintenance and ongoing wage disputes. We thought riders and employees and management were always generally on the same side in wanting the best transit system possible for Toronto. Turns out the employees view the people of Toronto as an enemy to be shit on for a few extra negotiating concessions. Good to know.

The provincial government legislated an end to the strike in a hurry by Sunday afternoon, and good for them. Now there are discussions of declaring the TTC an essential service, taking away the transit union’s right to strike. Given that the TTC is an essential service for Toronto, that decision cannot come soon enough. The only downside is that, generally, arbitrated contract settlements (the alternative to strikes) often wind up favouring workers and costing more. Which means the TTC workers will forever be rewarded for the shafting they gave the people of Toronto this month. If it means never having to walk home again, though, it may be a small price to pay. And perhaps we’ll tune up our bikes so we don’t have to look the TTC’s spiteful workers in the face for the rest of the summer.